Sydney’s Beaches Said To Be Contaminated

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30528, 25 August 1964, Page 15

Sydney’s Beaches Said To Be Contaminated

f.V.Z Press Assn.— Copyright) SYDNEY, August 24. Sydney’s worldfamous surf beaches are heavily contaminated by sewage pollution, including typhoid and para-typhoid organisms. This is revealed in a secret report of Sydney Water Board experts, released simultaneously in Sydney and Tokyo. The authors of the report—the board’s chief medical officer (Dr. M. J Flynn) and its chief chemist (Mr D. Thistlethwayte)—

claim the contamination poses no threat to surfers But this was disputed by a Sydney doctor who said there “must be a health hazard" in polluted water. The doctor added: “It is alarming to learn we are bathing in diluted sewerage. Although

we have escaped an epidemic, this does not mean it cannot happen. “Some day someone is going to swallow enough bacteria to trigger an outbreak of typhoid.” The doctor said comparative figures of notifiable diseases quoted in the report did not provide a reliable indicator, because some diseases came in cycles. It was significant, he said, that a lower incidence of some diseases should be expected in sewered metropolitan areas, yet the figures quoted in the report showed more cases in the sewered Sydney metropolitan area last year

This indicated that beach pollution could be a factor in the higher incidence of typhoid in Sydney. The report will be presen.ed by Mr Thistlethwayte to a world conference of top water pollution research I scientists, which opened in

Tokyo today. It was prepared by the experts early this year, but had been kept secret until today > The report emphasises that corrective measures are under way by a big expenditure on filter treatment plants. While admitting that tests had disclosed severe contamination at times during the surfing season, the experts claimed this, had not been linked with any increase in infectious disease.

Th* report says that with the small number of typhoid c ses and carriers in Sydney, it is unlikely that dangerous concentrations would be swallowed accidentally by swimmers “who are a fairly healthy group, with reasonable resistance to infection.” It adds that more than 4000 people are rescued from drowning each year, but none had reported infection. “Practically all cases of typhoid and para-typhoid in Sydney in the last 10 years

have been traced to contacts other than swimming,” the report said. “Health authorities believe that swimming in any water causes an appreciable risk of eye, ear, nose and throat infections.

“But, again, there is no evidence in Sydney that swimming in seawater, whether polluted or not, is the cause of more illness of this type than swimming in chlorinated fresh-water pools.” The report reveals that the pollution threat comes from eight ocean outfalls, located along 20 miles of beaches between Cronulla and Manly. They discharge sewerage into the ocean at a daily rate of 150 million gallons.

“Occasional tests *in the sewers indicate that typhoid and para-typhoid organisms are commonly present in the sewage reaching the outfalls, and it may be assumed that sewage discharges commonly contain pathogenic (disease-

carrying) organisms,” it said.

About half the New South Wales population lived in the metropolitan area, within reasonable access of the beaches. The other half lived from 50 to 800 miles from Sydney beaches, and the incidence of infectious diseases was similar for both groups.

A table accompanying the report shows last year there were 12 metropolitan and three country cases of typhoid and para-typhbid fever, three metropolitan and two country cases of polio, and 1720 metropolitan and 837 country cases of infective hepatitis. These cases were reported from a metropolitan population of 2.06 m and a country population of 1.97 m. The report estimates that Sydney people have four million swims a year on the beaches subject to pollution. Graphs with the report show that the sewage fields travel mostly in a southerly direction

and the beaches are directly affected by easterly and northeasterly winds, which prevail in the surfing season. Variable winds and currents can bring sewage, detectable to a depth of about 2ft 6in, to the line of breakers, the report says. Primary treatment works have been commenced to deal with the problem, it says.

The report. says that another source of contamination was grease from industrial wastes —residual fatty acids from soaps, animal and vegetable tissues—which matted sand on the. feet and between the toes of bathers. Mechanical cleaning of beaches has buried the grease which has been found in substantial quantities 18in below the surface. An objectionable animal fat odour is apparent when the grease content rises to about four parts in 10,000 parts of sand.